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Saturday, 12 August 2017

Hut Group hits £2.5bn valuation with £125m Old Mutual investment

One of Britain's fastest-growing technology start-ups has secured a new round of funding valuing it at £2.5bn - cementing its status among the country's biggest privately owned companies.

Sky News has learnt that The Hut Group, a health and beauty retailer behind brands‎ such as Grow Gorgeous and Myprotein, has signed a deal to sell a £125m stake to Old Mutual Global Investors (OMGI), the asset management giant.

Insiders said the stake sale - which would be OMGI's first such equity investment‎ in a private company - would be announced next week.

The deal will catapult The Hut Group further up the rankings of Britain's biggest home-grown companies, and will come just two years after a previous fundraising ‎valued the company at just under £1bn.

Headquartered in Cheshire, The Hut Group was set up in 2004 by Matthew Moulding and John Gallemore.

It now employs more than 3,000 people and has said that it expects that figure to double by 2019.